Blind bake your pastry with coins on baking parchment if you don’t have baking beans.

After blind baking, bake for a further 3-4 minutes with an egg-white wash to seal your pastry and protect from a soggy bottom.

Ingredients for the sweet pastry

125g (5 heaped tbps) plain flour

75g very cold butter (I always use salted butter)

25g (1tbsp) caster sugar

1 egg yolk

1 egg white

Cold water

Ingredients for the filling

Lemon curd

150g room temperature butter

150g caster sugar

3 eggs

150g ground almonds

2 tsp almond extract

zest of 1 lemon

flaked almonds for decoration

Method

Freeze the pastry butter and grate in to the flour – this makes it a quick and easy pastry with little rubbing required and keeps the pastry cold too! Add the sugar and mix lightly with a fork. Then add the fork-whipped egg yolk and as much cold water (or as little) to bind together to a dry ball. Chill in cling film for around 20-30 minutes.

Roll the chilled pastry in between to sheets of clingfilm. This keeps your surfaces clean, and saves you drying out the pastry. Roll to thickness no more than 4mm and wide enough to cover your dish.

I use disposable foil flan cases.

Prick the surface of the pastry and chill again. Once chilled put in a pre-heated over (180C) for around 18 minutes with a baking paper and coin/baking beans cover on the base.

Remove the sheet and coins/beans and lightly cover the base with fork-whipped egg white. The white only needs to be slightly broken down so that it covers without lumps, not whisked.

Bake for another 3 minutes.

Let the pastry cool whilst you make the filling.

Cream the butter and sugar and then add the fork-whipped eggs a little at a time. Add the ground almonds, lemon zest, and almond extract.

Cover the base of the pastry with a layer of lemon curd, as much as you like – but remember that the more you layer, the less control you have over where it end up once your filling is added!

Add your filling starting at the outside, working around and then filling the very middle. Top with flaked almonds and bake for 40-50 minutes.

It will bloom up and give a beautifully rounded top. Best served with cold cream.